


Hollow

by Skullharvester



Series: One-Shots (Dragon Age) [1]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Angst, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-31
Updated: 2021-01-31
Packaged: 2021-03-17 15:14:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,215
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29102361
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skullharvester/pseuds/Skullharvester
Summary: The Warden (one of them) reflects on the journey he and his best friends from the Circle tower he grew up in went on.With what little time he has left before the Calling takes him, he attempts to sort out the complicated feelings between himself, the people he once loved, and those whom he finds himself loving now.Life is short and fleeting, but maybe there's some joy to be had while it lasts.
Relationships: Morrigan/Male Warden (Dragon Age), Zevran Arainai/Male Warden
Series: One-Shots (Dragon Age) [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2135310
Kudos: 1





	Hollow

**Author's Note:**

> Once again, I was going through some really old fanfics of mine, and I found this ancient thing and got a bit teary. (Apparently, I wrote it in 2015) I decided to clean up the formatting and post it here.
> 
> When my friend and I started playing Dragon Age at the same time, we came up with an alternate universe idea where, instead of there being ONE main character, there were two: Hers and mine! We love doing collaborated storylines like this a lot with single-player games, and it ended up being heartbreaking, but in a satisfying way.
> 
> Enjoy and have fun!
> 
> If you liked this tale, please drop me a kudos and/or a comment to let me know if you'd like to see more!
> 
> Thank you, and have a wonderful night!

These days, my body feels like a hollow shell that keeps marching forward for the sake of the Grey Wardens because it's all I have left anymore. 

It's funny: I loathed the day—and still do—that I was forced to become a Warden. I cried so hard right in front of my childhood friends in the Circle tower: Kahira and Jowan, the First Enchanter of our tower, and everyone else gathered at the time of the incident, and I begged not to be taken away from the only home I knew. 

I begged for what Kahira and I had done to try and help Jowan to be written off as an ignorant act of youth and sincere kindness towards a friend whose crimes of blood magic I pretended not to know about, but the choices were to either become a Warden or face Templar punishment. Those were my only options, and I hated it. I _still_ hate it to this day, years later.

But here I am helping the Wardens because there's no one left to pour what's left of my lifetime into. My very brief lifetime, for an elf, thanks to The Joining—another thing I had no choice of denying.

Because of The Joining, the deadly ritual one participates in to become a Grey Warden, my lifespan was shortened severely. What's worse, I've already been hearing the voices of the darkspawn in my mind vividly. It's not fair. Throughout my whole life, I've been left with no options. No freedom. 

I suppose Kahira has gone through the same situation, but last I'd heard, she had run off with Jowan behind my back and has two children of her own now. I guess she doesn't have time or a need for me anymore. We're not even related by blood, after all, so now that she has a real family, she won't need me.

What am I left with? Nothing. No one. Not even glory. Whenever anyone brings up “THE” Grey Warden, they believe there was only _one_ leader, and not two. What's more, “THE” Warden is spoken of as if they were some faceless, unknown entity. 

I'm sure Kahira prefers it that way, but for me, it hurts that when I enter an inn or a tavern or a shop or anywhere, I'm just another elf. No one special. No one important. It's not like I can prove my power to make a point unless I _wanted_ to be hunted down as an apostate. 

Even the Grey Wardens don't recognize me as “THE” Warden. One of them, rather. They just assume I'm another captain or lieutenant of some sort, at best.

I feel the will to live being sapped from me each day I wake up, and it's not just because of the darkspawn taint pulsating in my veins. It's just that there's nothing to live for anymore. Nothing to keep waking up for each morning. In fact, each day I wake up, another disappointment follows the previous. 

Honestly, I would rather die in my bed while sleeping than survive another day wondering if today will be the day that I get sent to the Deep Roads. Alone. I never wanted to go alone. Zevran promised me that he would at least escort me past the entrance and say his goodbyes, but he's not here anymore. Somehow, though, I kind of saw it coming.

At some point, when I was called away from my trip to Antiva and back to the Wardens—to some dreadful keep—I promised Zevran that it would only be a brief excursion, and we exchanged letters while I was gone. But, over time, the letters became fewer and fewer, and after a while, he stopped replying to my letters at all.

For a long time, I lied to myself and worried that he had stopped answering my letters because something terrible happened to him, but deep down, I knew that wasn't true. I knew what had really happened. He had left me and gone back to his old ways. People don't really change, to be fair. 

We all say at some crossroads in our lives that we want to try and be better people, but I don't think that's truly possible. Whatever persona we try to force ourselves into as we “turn over a new leaf” eventually fades away and we retreat into our earnest selves, eventually. It's a harsh thing to say, but I've never been wrong about this.

My concerns were confirmed when I had, by chance, met the infamous “Hawke” face-to-face. We had a few drinks and we started telling one another more personal information than we probably should have. 

Apparently, it's a small world. Hawke met my Zevran while traveling, one thing led to another, and they had a one-night fling, of sorts. Hawke sincerely apologized and explained that it was a drunken mistake that never would’ve happened if they’d known that Zevran was already in a relationship with someone else, but the damage had already been done, as far as I was concerned.

I wasn't mad, though—not at Hawke. Not really at Zevran, either, to be honest. I just took the information in with a solemn look on my face nodded, and I forgave Hawke with a meaningless, patronizing pat on the shoulder. It brought a strange relief to know the truth and have closure. A final nail that would seal the coffin in which my relationship with Zevran was entombed. It was over with for good now. 

Sometimes when I think back to my time with Zevran, my heart aches, but when I reminisce about the moment it was all over with, I feel a burden lifted off my shoulders and my heart becomes like stone: hard and cold, but protected. At least I didn't have to wonder anymore.

The silver lining to Hawke’s awkward personal visit with me was that they knew me to be “THE” Grey Warden as spoken in tales and sung about in songs. Hawke asked with a perplexed look: “Weren't there two, though?”

I grinned slyly and replied: “No. Just one.”

Maybe it was selfish of me to take all the glory for myself and to leave my dear friend—someone who’d been like a sister to me all my life—Kahira out of the picture. Then again, wouldn't she have _wanted_ it that way now that she's tried to make herself disappear from the public eye? 

Besides, I needed this. I needed something to make me feel good about myself again. She had all the happy ending that she needed, and apparently, her idea of a happy ending was one without me in it. If that weren't so, then why has she abandoned me like everyone else?

I really, _really_ wanted Hawke to stay. For the first time in a long time, I felt like I had met a new friend. Perhaps it could become something more than that if I were lucky. Sadly, Hawke couldn't. For one, they had other places to be. Secondly, there was another elven man in Hawke’s life. Someone named Fenris. Good things never last, do they? More wine for me, I suppose.

I don't know why or remember when, but one day out of the blue, I received a letter from Morrigan. It was short and formal. Remembering what she was like, I could tell from the wording that she was essentially inviting me to send her a letter in return, all while not revealing her deepest feelings without figuring out where I stood first.

We always had such a strange relationship. I could never tell if we were friends or enemies, but either way, I considered her a kindred spirit, and I knew she secretly felt the same way about me. After all, I don't think she would have chosen just _anyone_ to sire her child, even though I had the sense its purpose was for something more sinister than saving the lives of myself and Kahira.

I’d nearly forgotten about the night before we faced the archdemon. Not out of carelessness, of course, but because the whole incident was rather shocking and unusual for me—more so than fighting the archdemon itself. I tried to block it out of my mind, at first. 

Occasionally, though, I found myself wondering whatever happened to that child. My child. Maker, it was such a strange thing to think that I could ever have a child of my own, considering my preference for men. Again, though, I didn't have much of a choice in the matter. The alternative was death.

I decided to write Morrigan a reply, asking about our child and how it was doing, if it was a boy or a girl, what its name was, if it had any dreams or talents yet, and if she had ever told it about its father. 

I asked her if she had fond memories of our journey like I did, and if she'd heard from the others recently. I asked her where she was, and what she was doing these days. I asked her if she had married and, if so, to whom. 

I told her about what had happened between Zevran and myself, and that it left me feeling so alone and vulnerable at times. I told her I was still aiding the Wardens because I had nothing better to do anymore. I told her how it scared me to die alone.

It took an awfully long time for me to get her response, and the lack of one made me assume my letter never got to her in the first place until the day finally came that I received her written answer. She said that we had a son and that his name was Kieran. (I wondered if she named him after Kahira in a roundabout way.)

She said that he looked so much like me. She said that he had wanted to meet me for years now, but that she was at a loss of the right words to say to convince me to reply to her letter, let alone come to see him at least once. She said that she had missed me. I couldn't believe it.

I never would have expected Morrigan to be an advisor within the court of Orlais, but she seemed oddly happy to be there for someone who spent so much time preferring a life in the wilds away from society. I think after I got over the surprise of her being there, of all places, I started to see how fitting her new role was for her. 

On top of that, I had to admit that, once I finally met with her in person again, she looked stunning to me in the gowns they had her wearing these days. I'm embarrassed to say that I glanced at her in a way that I never have before at a woman, and I think she noticed…

Kieran is a beautiful child. If you had asked me before if I ever wanted a child, I would have laughed and called the thought ridiculous. But when he was there in front of me, smiling and hugging me tightly, I didn’t think I could ever let him go. A selfish part of me briefly wished that I could have raised a son like this with Zevran, in a world where things had worked out in the end. 

The thought made me feel sorry for Morrigan, who was at that moment giving me a look of desperate hope that I would have never expected to see in her eyes. She was silently asking if I could stay and be a part of Kieran's family. With her. But I don't know if I could… Did that make me a terrible person…?

Later that night, the three of us laid in a large, comfortable Orlesian bed like one big happy family ought to, I imagine. Kieran was peacefully sleeping between Morrigan and myself while we two were wide awake with worried, uncertain thoughts on our minds. When I peeked over Kieran to get a look at Morrigan's face, I saw the numb expression I knew I once held when I realized that my love with Zevran had died. 

I'm not the most sympathetic of people, but it hurt to see her this way because, in a weird fashion, I felt that she was me in that moment. We were so alike in many ways that we might as well have been the same person from two different lifetimes, living in two different bodies. I wanted to protect her from having to live the kind of empty life I had been living for so long. Also, my soul felt weary to keep going on through life without anyone at my side.

I reached above our resting son's head on the pillow and entwined her fingers with my own and just laid there holding her hand. The numbness in her expression faded away as she looked over at me and held my hand tightly in return, desperate for something to hold onto just as badly as I was.

I don't know what the future holds for us, but there's one thing I know for sure: I don't want to die alone.

**Author's Note:**

> "It's hard to die when all the birds are singing in the sky.  
> Now that the spring is in the air, with the flowers everywhere.  
> I wish that we could both be there."
> 
> Recommended Listening: Seasons in the Sun by Terry Jacks


End file.
